Fort Hood Killings: No Safe Place from Invisible Wounds of War

As the Fort Hood families grapple with the attacks on their dead and wounded loved ones, it is a bitter irony that people were murdered in what was supposed to be one of the safest places on earth. As one general said on TV last night, "we don't carry weapons here at Fort Hood except for training exercises because it's our home."

Where can a soldier be safe, if not on at home on base? That may have been the killer's intent -- to strike at the core bonds of trust that hold military families together; to make everyone as distrustful of each other as he apparently was of them.  That will fail.

Yes there will be changes to the way we lived before -- more security and likely open displays of weapons on base as deterrent and protection. But also more open discussion of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

At least there should be.

In the wake of the massacre there will be a tendency to say one man snapped. That would be wrong. The truth is anyone could have snapped -- and this one sent out warning flares before he did -- so we need to de-stigmatize PTSD and mental health before someone else snaps and more American families suffer.   

While it is unfair to expect an after action report on such a sensitive subject in the instantaneous news cycle, some immediate questions deserve attention, such as how does a negative performance review (as alleged here) yield a deployment to a war zone? At what point does PTSD render a soldier unfit for deployment? Do we have the mental health regimes we need? Who is screening the screeners?

Others will say that after the Walter Reed investigations and needs assessment, we are doing all we can to help our troops and veterans get the resources they need. That too would be wrong - we currently have a Senate "hold" blocking passage of S. 1963, “The Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2009” which could be helping troops and veterans cope with disability and trauma -what the American Legion calls "the invisible wounds of war."

Also, we can work faster and smarter to implement the ideas expressed at last week's first-ever DOD-VA Mental Health Summit.   

Tragedy will strike again: there is no safe place from the invisible wounds of war. We can't say we weren't warned; but, for the sake of the grieving families, the dead and the wounded, we must be able to say we did all we knew how to stop it.

 

Follow Christine Pelosi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sfpelosi

Comments

[dressking]

A ball can explode when you press it really hard. This guy was cornered. That drove him crazy. He had no choice but to take part in a war that he did not like. The lesson is: don't force people to do things that they don't like. Or else they will go crazy. We have so many crazy people. Why? Because we force them to accept things that they don't like.

[readytsf]

The guy WAS NEVER deployed!!! How did he get PTSD, from a movie????? Wake up!!!

[LatteLibertine]

My father fought in the end of World War II and in every war after until and including Vietnam. I do not feel sorry for Maj Hasan and do not support people who spew this "second hand" PTSD nonsense. Hasan is a whiny self-absorb sociopath. It is inexcusable to decide to murder as many people as you can until stopped regardless of "the motivation". What he did wasn't protest or a political statement, it was murder.

All that said, it is also unacceptable to vilify Muslims and Islam because of this fellow. The vast majority of Muslims would not do what Maj Hasan chose to do.

[Javaline]

I wish more people would learn to discuss the maladies of the mind more openly. Why there is a stigma attached to this facet of life is a mystery to me, because every human falls prey to such episodes.

There are as many reasons on this earth why one person snaps under pressure as there are humans. And therein lies the problem - the human tendency to box individuals into categories. It prohibits us from looking at people as individuals with individual needs and limits. By lumping people into convenient boxes we assume all people in those boxes will perform/react to the same stimulus.

Since the military is in the business of training people to kill, why is there any surprise at all that at some point one of those people will reach their personal limit and just break? And if that person has inner turmoil that is ignored by those around him/her it is less of a surprise when it happens. The need to be validated by others is a strong primeval urge in humans; when that need is oppressed nature dictates that the pressure will be released in whatever form is appropriate for a specific individual.

As for who is screening the screeners? My guess is nobody cares as long as their numbers look good.

[THORYOU]

where is the hate crime bill NOW P.S. strip him of his rank NOW

[mariegachelin]

A man committed such vile acts and somehow, we find excuse by attaching mental illness as the cause. There are people who suffer from mental illness and they do not go around shooting people.

Is it possible that this guy is just a terrorist? He were not a Muslin or his name was Anglo and had committed these acts, would we have called his acts for what they are?

[S1m0n]

Were are these terrorists, too?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postal_killings#United_States

Of the 18 US killings listed since 1983, not one had an Arabic name.

Smith
Brooks
Brownlee
Sherril
Murphy
Taylor
Harris
McIlvane
Barnes
Jasion
Hilburn
Clark
Jennings
Tamayo
Deculit
San Marco
Gallaher
Tartt

How come it's only when a guy named Hasan copies them that this becomes terrorism?

Note this is only a list of USPS workplace rampages. Many more have occurred in other contexts.

[mariegachelin]

S1mon, had any of the names yoy mentioned committed the crimes that the Maj committed on a base and had made the arrangements that the Maj made, screaming God is great in Arabic and shared the same or similar views that the Maj. appeared to have in regards to the war, I would have have called them terrorist as well as I called the Major.
It's not the name, it is the action. I'm not politically correct, I'm a realist and I refuse to allow anyone to shut my eyes, muzzle me and vaccum my common sense out my brains. Maybe we are all at fault for the deaths and dreadful acts that the committed. We can't tie people's arms behind the backs and keep them from making decisions that can prevent problems for fer that common sense will hurt race relations. It's not about race, it's the about USA, my home and yours. We're not that bad.

[Hal Donahue - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks a lot Christine. We need to understand the stresses on our military and the people who help heal them. The costs are seldom recognized or appreciated. Let's see what the real story is.

[mcnary]

when you send people off to war, they are never the same again, and we send these troops back again and again... its total crazy to think we have tens of thousands of these folks coming home to what?

These bombs will be going off for years to come.....P­ersonally when i returned from Viet Nam i would have never , under any circumstance gone back, I heard people threaten to kill if they had to stay an extra day ...... how can we keep sending these troops back into that hell.

Please don't give me the they made the choice to be soldiers crap.

These troops come home to "the world" as we called it , see that the country is just happy daisy to get on without them and then back they go.... totally nuts....
Viet Nam troops were never let back into the states ... they knew they would desert to Canada.

This is a tragedy but,

Is this any big surprise to vets? i doubt it.....

[kernelofwisdom]

Surprise to me and I'm a vet. Surprise to my father and he's a Vietnam vet. Of course it is a surprise. It's not like it's routine. And in this situation it's not like he was responding to repeated deployment.

You don't know what his motivations were any more than people who say he did it as a jihad. The facts aren't in.

Oh, apparently, it's surprising to the entire Ft. Hood community it looks like - lots of vets there.

As you should well know, vets do not have one voice - they have many.

I'm with you that guys sent over and over (hell, even just once) to combat zones can be torn up by it, or at the least their lives "back home" wrecked, and I think we are putting too much on too few troops. We either need to reduce the scope of our conflicts or have more people involved in fighting them, imo.

[teletom]

This man had never been deployed..­..why are you so eager to excuse him?

[BOin08]

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan committed his own personal jihad on American soil-simple as that. The only "trigger" was Islam. Muslims will never be at peace with us. Wake up America.

[kernelofwisdom]

I'm sympathetic to the points the Blogger is making. But, I think it is premature for anybody of any stripe to use this event to support more or less of anything. If this event is to be an example, we need more facts. It may well turn out that this guy had no mental health problems and that the next guy simply will not say aloud the things this guy was thinking. How do you deal with that? How did he get the guns onto the base? Did he live on post? Was it because he was an officer? In a time of wartime, should policies on weapons on base, and getting them there, be even more strict? All of the above? In due time, we will see. But there is nothing yet to say this guy suffered from the invisible wounds of war, except in that he disagreed with what the US is doing.

I hope the day comes soon when these wars are over.

[theycallthewindmariah]

I have difficulty with the idea that this mass murder was because he "snapped" from secondary traumatization or vicarious PTSD from seeing wounds at Walter Reed and hearing so many horror stories. Research has shown that psychiatrists, psychologists, etc can get compassion fatique and secondary PTSD. But, so far, they haven't gone on murderous rampages against the groups what would be their patients. Psychiatrists treating 9/11 survivors did not go out and kill firemen. Doctors in emergency rooms who treat injured children day in and day out do not go and murder children.

The red flag is probably a person's inability to form good human connections. WaPo said he couldn't find a wife who was religous enough and, I bet, we'll find he didn't have many friends. I think, in the end, we'll find that he has more in common with all our other mass murderers than with the wounded warriors he was supposed to have treated.

[Enliberate]

The way to stop it is the way of peace, quite simply. Rampant, unchecked militarism without any moral basis other than "we're the best to ever come along" will lead to these kinds of horror. Clearly, this individual was in the wrong line of work. Perhaps he just peered too deep into the abyss-the rest just keep "doing their jobs."

[kernelofwisdom]

This is an insult to people with mental health issues. People with mental health problems are not more likely to harm other people. To suggest otherwise will cause people to stigmatize the mentally ill as violent. Further, there is nothing to say yet that this man was insane, at least any more insane than anyone who chooses to kill for a cause.

Should he have been screened better? Maybe. But how much, really, can you screen all soldiers at all times? Not enough information out yet to use this as an example of anything for anybody.

[Christine Pelosi - Huffpost Blogger]

Where is the insult? He had problems, he killed people, he was not identified as a threat to others before the murders -- so I ask who screens him? What is the threshold? What do you recommend?

[MrsFonebone]

He WAS identified as a troubled person who espoused fundamentalist Islamic ideas in appropriate places, such as Grand Rounds at Walter Reed, where other Muslims, per NPR, felt compelled to openly disagree with him. Reed found him deficient in performance so he got shipped to Hood and was starting military training, shooting and weapons (not such a smart move, is it?!) So this is another case of a lit firecracker being passed along. It has NOTHING to do with legitimate military PTSD--which is its own scandal.

[kernelofwisdom]

The other reply makes the point too. There was not, at the time I posted that, anything I could see that indicated he had a mental health problem. At this point, we just don't know. It is not correct to conclude that if you kill someone you must have a mental health issue that would have otherwise been treatable or discoverable, but for stigma. Mental health, or lack thereof, does not equal violence. Likewise, coherent logical thinking does not equal peace, unfortunately.

This person, based on what we know, does not represent mentally ill people anymore than he represents muslims, based on his actions. As it is, apparently he was becoming known for his sympathetic views toward what is perceived as our enemy; whether he had those views because he was mentally deficient is not known, I believe.

I think it is far to premature to use this event as an example for anything, until more facts are known. Nevertheless, diligence for the mental health of service members is something we should exercise, I agree.

[mheister]

I have some of the same questions Christine.

I understand that it's SOP in psychiatry and psychology for professional counselors to themselves in in counseling, because the emotional stress of the profession is recognized by the profession.

What's the military's SOP in this area? Was Major Hasan in regular counseling?

[k1dork]

The man had never been deployed, so I don't see how he had PTSD.

The fact is, he did NOT have PTSD, and "snapped" due to his ideologies.

[Christine Pelosi - Huffpost Blogger]

You could be right - he could have "snapped" due to his "ideologies" - which still begs my question: who screens the screeners? How do we know who might "snap" next?

We know that this killer had a poor performance evaluation, complained about deployment, and posted online comments about suicide bombers: is that the time to pull him from active duty? Why wasn't that done? What is the standard now used - and in light of the tragedy, what new standard do you recommend?

[kernelofwisdom]

Unfortunately, this kind of action will probably lead to greater monitoring, if not screening. That may be necessary to reduce the risk of a future event like this, but it will mean less personal freedom for soldiers. Already, the military environment is much different than what it was when I was in, but then so is the civilian environment.

More screening is good, maybe more monitoring too. But those come with a reduction in personal freedom and that is sad.

[Enliberate]

Well, of course we need "ideology checkers" aka, the Thought Police, in order to make sure that nobody is harboring any evil ideologies. This man is a creation of OUR ideology, which mass produces killers. I wish we had a screener to catch that.

[bajed]

There is no evidence that Major Hasan suffered from PTSD. None.